1/3 The giraffes in flip-flops attract a lot of attention (photo: Tonnie Vossen)
They are huge colorful works of art, in which hundreds of discarded flip flops have been incorporated. The elephants and giraffes are made from old flip flops washed up on Kenyan beaches. In the hands of the artists in Kenya, they get a second life as a work of art and at least as important: they no longer end up in the oceans as plastic waste. From Saturday, a selection of the artworks can be seen in the Cultuurfabriek in Veghel.
“This elephant contains 724 flip flops”, says Nicholas van Eijben from Boxtel. “It’s six feet to the top of its trunk, so you’re talking about an elephant of about two years.” Thanks to Nicholas and his brother Michael’s NicMic company, the merry beast of artists from Kenya flies all over the world.
“Flip-flops don’t last long and then get thrown away.”
Nicholas first heard of the beasts through his brother who was working at the Dutch embassy in Kenya at the time. “He was in contact with local woodcarvers who had been asked by a British-American lady to make sculptures of flip-flops she collected on the beach.”
Flip flops, he explains, are the most commonly worn footwear worldwide, especially by poor people. “But they don’t last long and are then thrown away. Through the oceans they end up in nature in small shreds and because fish and birds see it as food, they eventually die from it.”
“Then they made twenty giraffes and one was sold.”
In Kenya, the artists were happy to have an alternative to their traditional woodcarving. Tourists showed less and less interest in this and it also contributed to deforestation in the area. “Then they made twenty giraffes and one was sold.”
“The production of artworks from flip-flops actually went quite well, they had a workshop and a company name ‘Ocean Sole’. But although there was also interest from abroad, it was not possible to grow the trade in the animal kingdom to other parts of the country. world,” Nicholas explains. So the brothers decided to tackle it themselves.
The works of art are now found all over the world. “We have just delivered a four meter high elephant to the Sint Antonius Hospital in Utrecht and there is a huge grizzly bear in an accountancy office in Tilburg.”
In Kenya, the works of art now provide the livelihood of 90 employees, who can therefore also send their children to school. “Seventy percent of the income goes back to Kenya.”
Video images from the makers:
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